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It must have been difficult for Schanberg to confront the record of his own blindness and powerlessness when he wrote the articles on which this movie is based. It must be nerve-racking for the producers to offer a tale so lacking in standard melodramatic satisfactions. But the result is worth it, for this is the clearest film statement yet on how the nature of heroism has changed in this totalitarian century. In The Killing Fields, as in reality, swashbuckling begins to look not merely improbable but impractical. It is the survivor, silently, indefatigably worming his way through monolithic adversity toward the light, who rightly commands our awe.
—By Richard Schickel